Talkies
by Hawki
Summary: Marjorie Prime Oneshot: Talking to the primes was meant to help. But talking to this replica of her recently deceased mother, Raina found no such comfort.


**Talkies**

The thing before her wasn't her mother.

On a purely intellectual level, Raina knew that. However, even if not for that, even if the hologram was an absolutely perfect simulacrum of the person who'd brought her into this world, she'd have known that something was wrong. If she'd been talking to her real mother, they'd have already got into a shouting match. Her real mother wouldn't be sitting there, smiling like an idiot. Her real mother wouldn't be sitting at all. She'd be pacing around, doing something in the kitchen, deciding to ignore the fact that it was the year 2054, and no-one bothered working in the kitchen unless they were an actual chef.

"Hello," said the prime. "Are you Raina?"

And her real mother wouldn't have had to ask that. So this not being her real mother, all she did was let out a grunt.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Can you repeat yourself?"

Raina scowled – Alan Turing would be turning in his grave, if he heard that these things, these "primes" (she never got why they were called "prime," when by definition they had to be the second version of the original), had passed the Turing Test, he would have laughed. Heck, if someone had told _her_ that, she'd be laughing as well.

"Did you hear me?" the prime asked. "Would you like to repeat the question?"

 _No, I wouldn't,_ Raina thought. But instead, she sat down opposite the prime. In her old apartment. The apartment that her father still called home, and until recently, her mother as well. Sat down, and said, "I'm Raina. Your daughter, and youngest child."

She winced, even as the prime continued to smile like an idiot. 'Your daughter and youngest child.' Who talked like that? Primes, for one of course, but apparently the AI apocalypse that people had predicted for nearly a century would occur not through force of arms, but through force of speech. Or something.

"Raina," the prime said. "I know a lot about you."

She snorted, running a hand through her hair. "I bet you do."

"But I would like to know more," the prime said. As if anticipating the reaction of the meatbag in front of her, she continued talking. "Talking to me will help you, and allow me to help you. So when I help you, you can help yourself."

She folded her arms. "What if I don't need any help?"

The prime didn't say anything. A glitch, or processing, she didn't know. Or care.

"I mean, there's something you could tell me," Raina said, her voice rising in pitch. "You could say why after gran died you decided to go to Madagascar with dad, and ruin the holiday by hanging yourself. I mean, any explanation for that?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't have that information."

"No, of course you don't. Because you're not her."

"I'm not," said the prime. Her smile had long faded by this point. "But talking is part of the process."

"The process," Raina snorted, leaning back in her chair. "Right. The _process_."

A silence lingered in the room. For a moment, she wondered if she asked the prime to shut off, if the order would be obeyed. If her father gave the order, sure, but would command privileges be extended to her? After all, she hadn't planned on coming here. Hadn't planned to talk to her mother for quite some time, if at all. But after hearing that her mother had died, the first thing she'd done was leave work immediately, come home, hug her dad, and let him cry. Second thing (fifth thing? Sixth?) was let him talk her into talking to "the prime" (she noticed that he used the term "the prime," not "Tess Prime," as some people referred to the holograms). She wondered why, at the time, why he wasn't talking to the prime himself, but she'd gone ahead and done so, while he went out to do…whatever it was that grieving widowers did when they walked out of the house. She didn't know. Whatever it was, it was different to what grieving daughters did, namely sit around and look at holograms.

"Why don't you tell me about yourself?" the prime blurted out.

Raina sat there and folded her arms. It really was no wonder this prime was so basic – her father had barely talked to it, so it had little sense of the person it was trying to recreate.

"Or can you tell me about me?"

 _Fuck it._ Raina leant forward. If she was going to talk to the god in the machine, she might as well deliver the fruit of forbidden knowledge. Because this sure as hell was no Eden, and once her dad was a bit better, she was going to leave the garden forever. Not as long as this serpent was here.

"Alright," she said. "For starters, you wouldn't be asking me to do anything."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

Raina sighed – the prime looked like an adult, but it had the intellect of a child. "What I mean is, you wouldn't ask me to tell you about you. You'd tell me. Order me."

"Oh. I see."

Raina wasn't sure about that but pressed on. "Of course, with you being you, and me being me, I wouldn't do what you said, and I'd refuse because…well, I guess that's what angry teenagers do. Especially teens who have siblings that mum won't shut up about, who are doing _so much better_ than you."

"Your siblings," the prime said. "Their names are-"

"Yes, I know what my brothers are called," Raina snapped. "You never shut up about them, and…" She trailed off. "Well, not you-you, but…but…"

"My template," the prime said.

Template. Was that it, Raina asked? The "template?" Was her mother, a human being, a "template?" Who talked like that? Who conceived of that?

"Are you alright?" the prime asked.

Raina looked out the window. It was bright outside. Too bright. Her father would get a pretty long walk in.

"Raina?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes," she said. "I mean…where were we?"

"We were-"

"So, like, things come to a head, where I say I'm never going to see you again. That I'm going to go with my friends, that I'm going to form a band, and I don't care what you or dad think of me." Her words were getting faster, but less clear. "And let's just say that…well, it didn't work out."

"Jon told me," the prime said.

"Yeah, I bet he did." Raina leant back in the chair, taking a look out the window. The trees' leaves were green – it was the height of summer, and being summer, it didn't take her long to spot a bird. Lucky thing. It didn't have to deal with this kind of nonsense. When its parents died, it had the luxury of knowing that they'd stay dead.

"I saw you, you know," the prime said.

Raina looked back at her. "What?"

"I saw you," the prime repeated. "Or rather, my template. She visited one of your concerts."

"I-"

"If I recall correctly, you were playing a bag of broken glass."

Raina put a hand to her eyes. _Christ. That concert._

"Oh," said the prime. "Have I said something wrong?"

She didn't want to think about that concert. Didn't want to point out that the prime saying "if I recall correctly" was a poor attempt at mimicking human speech. Humans could recall incorrectly. Computers didn't. They might glitch, they might get viruses, but their memories would only change if a user forced them to. The only way the prime knew about her mother visiting her was if Jon had told her. And the only way Jon would have known would be if Tess had told him. And if Tess, her mother, had seen her play…

She couldn't say it. Couldn't indulge it. Couldn't even consider the possibility that…that…

"Should we stop?" the prime said.

"No," Raina said, taking her palm away from her eyes (after rubbing them a bit). "I…I'm going to be gone soon, so I may as well finish the story."

"Oh," said the prime quietly.

"Yeah, well, it ends better," she said. "I mean, I'm working in financial planning now. Paper-pushing…I mean, not that we really use paper that much, but…I mean, you'd still say I'd have a long way to go, and that I'd wasted years of my life…which I did…and you'd know I already knew that, because you'd say it anyway, because you're my mother, and…and I guess in your own way you…that you…"

"Raina?" the prime asked.

There was no speech, at least not in words. The sound, however, said all.

"Shall we continue?" the prime asked.

Still no words but the song of the bird outside. And the elegy of the human nearby.

"Or shall we-"

"End program."

In a microsecond, the image of Tess disappeared. There was no shutdown sequence, no fading out – the termination of the program was instant. In some part of her brain, Raina felt gratified to know that her father had programmed the prime to respond to her commands as much as his. But only a tiny part. Mind, soul, and heart were within her, and all her body could do was sit in the chair. Thinking. Reflecting. Wishing that the story was better. That it had a happy ending. That it could even be rewritten. Not uploaded to an artificial intelligence that would remember the story, analyse it, and adapt it into simulacrum of a woman not even a year dead.

 _What you thinking dad?_

She didn't know. But she wouldn't ask.

 _What am I thinking?_

A question she could ask, but not answer.

 _What am I doing?_

Sitting. Thinking. Reflecting. Of the good, the bad, and everything in-between.

Outside, the bird began to sing.


End file.
